One day in 1910 the crew of HMS Dreadnought played host to a
rapidly arranged royal visit. The ship, which was the British Navy’s flagship
and its pride and joy, was lying at anchor in Weymouth Bay off the Dorset coast
as part of the Home and Atlantic Fleets. The visitors, so the ship’s officers
were informed, would be four princes from Abyssinia, who were to be made
welcome, shown every courtesy, and – in effect – treated like the royalty they
were. A telegram, signed by the Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office,
made this abundantly clear.
At about the time that the telegram was being received, the
stationmaster at London’s Waterloo Station was being harangued by a man in a
posh suit and a top hat who told him that he was Herbert Cholmondesly from the
Foreign Office and that he needed a special VIP coach to be added to the next
train to Weymouth so that four princes from Abyssinia could be conveyed on a
visit to the Royal Navy. They would, of course, need to be welcomed
appropriately at the other end of the line.
And that is what happened. The coach was duly provided, the
princes boarded it, and a few hours later they arrived at Weymouth to be given
the full VIP treatment with a guard of honour.
They were ferried out to HMS Dreadnought where they were
piped aboard the ship which had been duly decked with flags and bunting. One
problem was that the ship did not have a flag of Abyssinia that they could fly,
nor did the ship’s band have the music for the Abyssinian national anthem. They
did the next best thing, in their view, by running up the flag of Zanzibar and
playing the Zanzibar national anthem. They might have been concerned that the
princes would be offended, but in the end their worries were groundless – these
“princes” were none the wiser, because they were not from Abyssinia or anywhere
remotely close to it.
The Royal Navy, and the stationmaster at Waterloo, had
fallen victim to a superbly organized prank, courtesy of William de Vere Cole,
who must count as one of the greatest practical jokers Britain has ever
produced. It was he who sent the telegram to HMS Dreadnought and he was the man
who claimed to be Herbert Cholmondesly of the Foreign Office.
The four princes were nothing of the sort. One of them was
actually the novelist Virginia Woolf! The four friends of de Vere Cole were
fully made up and costumed by a professional theatre make-up artist – another
friend of the joker. They were accompanied on the trip by Woolf’s brother
Adrian (as “interpreter”) and de Vere Cole himself.
Once on board HMS Dreadnought the “princes” performed their
roles in ways that would have excited the suspicion of anyone who knew anything
about life in Abyssinia, but fortunately for them that did not include any of
the people they met.
The jokers handed out visiting cards printed in Swahili and
spoke in Latin, disguised by what they hoped was a passable East African
accent. The only non-Latin expression they uttered was “bunga-bunga!”, which
was their appreciation when shown anything of interest.
As they were shown around they bestowed Abyssinian military
honours on the senior officers. At sunset they requested prayer mats. However,
they refused all offers of refreshment, this being done just in case any of
their false lips fell off while eating or drinking.
There were two occasions on which the hoax might have
backfired. The first was when half of one of the princes’ moustaches flew off
when he sneezed – he was able to recover it and stick it back on before anyone
noticed.
The second was when the group was introduced to an officer
who was not only related to Virginia Woolf but was also well acquainted with
William de Vere Cole, who was not in disguise. Either the officer really did
not recognize them or he realized that the arch-joker was up to his tricks
again, and spilling the beans would cause far too much embarrassment all round.
After photographs were taken (see above), the visitors returned to shore
and thence to London, presumably laughing all the way.
There must have been red faces at the Admiralty when the
story emerged that all it took for the pride of the Royal Navy to be boarded by
perfect strangers was a fake telegram and a brilliant piece of theatrical
make-up. Fortunately, military security has been improved in the century since
this trick was pulled off with such great success!
© John Welford
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